Troubled horizon

Wednesday

Sep 24, 2008 at 11:42 PM

"Every one who looks beyond the end of his nose must wonder what lies beyond the horizon."— William Woodruff

Woodruff, the eminent University of Florida scholar and historian, spent his professional life drawing lessons from the past five centuries and projecting them beyond tomorrow's horizon.Born in poverty in England, Woodruff fought with the British Army in North Africa and Italy in World War II, but later came to adopt America as his own. He died in Gainesville this week at the age of 92, and his gift of insight and vision will be missed.He chronicled the end of the Cold War, warned of the rise of religious fundamentalism, and foresaw the ascendency of China as a global economic power. "I am convinced that we cannot see the present except through the past," he argued.Woodruff's seminal work was "A Concise History of the Modern World." And although by nature an optimist, he titled the final chapter, ominously, "The Threat of World Anarchy." He was especially concerned about the growing gap between the world's richest and poorest nations, warning that "Extreme poverty and extreme affluence cannot live in peace together."Perhaps one reason the poor are poorer than they need be is because of an inordinate capacity of the world's defense industries to consume an ever-greater proportion of the world's wealth," Woodruff wrote in 2005. "Military spending, except for a short period after the Second World War, has always followed an upward course, but the curve has never been as steep, or as alarming, as it is now."If anything, the experience of the past eight years should have taught Americans that unbridled military superiority is not the key to prosperity, or even freedom. Two disastrous wars, at least one of them totally unnecessary, have drained our coffers and tarnished America's prestige abroad. And with our economy teetering on collapse and our deficit reaching historic proportions, it is difficult to argue that our enormous investment in what President Eisenhower once called the military-industrial complex, has made us safer abroad or more secure at home.And the military spending curve indeed continues to rise. In this, his last year in office, President Bush intends to sell or give more than $32 billion worth of weaponry to nations around the world; up from $12 billion in 2005. America is by far the largest arms merchant to a seemingly increasingly hostile world. No other nation even comes close."This is not about being gun runners," Bruce S. Lemkin, Air Force deputy under secretary, told The New York Times last week. "This is about building a more secure world."To which we can only respond with William Woodruff's observation, garnered from a lifetime of studying 500 years of world history: "On the evidence of the past, if it's war we prepare for, it's war we will get."One only needs to look beyond one's nose toward a troubled horizon to grasp the truth of that prophecy.

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